Things are suddenly getting very real around here. After months (okay, years) of writing and revising A Strange Companion, it’s suddenly a real book.

I know it’s a real book because:

It’s available for pre-order on the major bookseller sites.

A printed proof arrived and I have held it in my hand.

I’m throwing a Publication Party, and I couldn’t do that without a real, published book.

It’s all been a bit of a whirlwind these past few weeks and I’ve been living or dying by the task list. I’ve eaten meals but, more than once, I’ve looked at my empty plate with no recollection of cutting, chewing, or swallowing food. My husband has asked me questions and I’ve found myself staring at him as if he’s speaking an alien language, while my brain spins to catch up. If someone asked me my plans for the weekend, I’d say, “Oh, nothing special,” but I’d be thinking, Duh. I’m working on my book!

I think it’s supposed to be this way. A book launch is supposed to be a crazy time of preparation, of dotting i’s and crossing t’s, of smoothing the way for the shiny new book to burst out into the world.

As insane as it’s been, it’s also been a lot of fun. I’ve had some incredible moments, such as:

The moment I finished inputting the proofreader’s final edits and realized I’d never have to read this book again. (I still love it; I just don’t want to read it again for a very long time. Plus, I know what happens at the end!)

The day I arrived home to find the printer’s first proof copy sitting on my doorstep.

When I read the first review and realized that someone other than me and the people who care about me loved my book.

So, in all the swirling madness, it’s these moments that I’m trying to remember and savor.

Now for some details:

If you’d like to pre-order the book, grab it by April 3rd for a special bonus gift. All that information is here.

And, if you happen to be in the L.A. area, I would love for you to join me at my Publication Party. It’s at {pages} a bookstore in Manhattan Beach. 7 pm, Friday, April 7th. There’ll be drinks and hors d’oeuvres. And of course, there’ll be the closest thing I can find to Owen’s legendary chocolate cake. (And if you’ve no idea what I’m talking about, you’d better take a look at the sneak peek of the book here.)

My dad passed away more than 30 years ago and there was a time I thought I would never get over losing him. It seemed as if everything I did and everything that happened to me was filtered through that loss. I felt, at 15, that people looked at me differently and that it was obvious to everyone that I was different.

For a long time, I couldn’t talk about what had happened without my voice catching in my throat and my face burning. In fact, I think it was close to a decade before I could talk about my dad at all without having to forcibly keep my emotions under control.

Even now, after all this time has passed, I often find that my grief for other losses is amplified. On several occasions, I’ve been to funerals for distant relatives or acquaintances, people whose passing shouldn’t leave a significant hole in my life, and found myself disproportionately upset.

Sometimes people ask how long it takes to recover from a loss and I always think it’s like asking, “How long is a piece of string?” It takes as long as it takes and, even though our society seems to have an unspoken timeline for grief, nobody else can dictate when it’s time to be “over it.”

When Life Hands You Lemons…

I’m a firm believer that no experience is ever wasted, so I’ve lent some of my experiences with grief to my fictional characters. Although Kat’s story in A Strange Companion is very different to mine, I have borrowed a lot from my own emotional journey for her. I’ve also written parts of my story as essays or melded them into short stories. I recently published a story about my dad that I first wrote for the spoken word event, Spark Off Rose. You can read Lost and Found on Wattpad.

Since we humans first began gathering into social and familial groups, we’ve used stories to create a sense of community. Early hunter-gatherers shared tales to pass along information, traditions, and important lessons.

In this fascinating Life Science article, Campfire Tales Served as Early Human Social Media, researchers noticed a big difference between daytime and nighttime campfire stories told among a tribe of Kalahari Bushmen. While the daytime conversations were made up of only 6 percent stories, the rest being complaints, gossip, hunting plans, and jokes, once the tribe gathered around the nighttime campfires, 81 percent of conversations were stories.

The stories passed along information about tribal customs and ceremonies, as well as warnings of dangers, such as the story of three bushmen killed in a fire. The tribe also used stories to pass information to younger generations.

Modern Stories

Even today, we find our way around in the world and understand who we are through handed down stories. I heard stories about my aunt who emigrated to Australia by boat in the 1940s, which helped me understand why I seemed to be the only person in my family to move far from home. I recently learned that my habit of dragging my husband on long, under-prepared hikes comes not from my dad, as I’d always believed, but from my mum, who had the same habit.

As a child, I learned about the dangers of electrocution, of hot cooking oil, of crossing the street, not from formal lessons, but from stories told by others. More recently, my social media feed has bombarded me with a million things to worry about, everything from terrorist attacks to falling off a cliff while playing Pokémon Go.

From my own writing, I’ve discovered I am not alone in my experiences and I’ve come to a deeper understand of myself. Even when I make up stories in my fiction, I often find myself digging into into my own past and learning about myself from the way my characters behave. It’s one of the many wonders and pleasures of telling stories.

As you think about the stories in your life, what important wisdom would you pass along if you had the chance to sit around the campfire with your younger self?

In the corner of my bedroom is a large bag of journals. At first glance you’d mistake me for one of those people who fills book after book with profound thoughts, but that’s not who I am. Each journal has a handful of entries for each time I decided to dedicate myself to journaling. I’d write for a few days, then skip, then quit. Even when I knew that journaling would help me through difficult patches in my life, I never managed to keep it up for long enough to dig down into the good stuff. Turns out I’m not much of a navel gazer.

Under the desk in my office is another pile of journals. Every page of these books is filled with my writing. So what’s the difference?

The stories in the second stack of journals were almost all generated from writing prompts. These prompts might have been lines pulled from books, prompts given to me in a class, or verbal or visual prompts that set me off in a particular direction.

The thing about prompts is that they force you into the writing. There’s no room to ponder what to write. They take away the pressure of trying to find something profound or important to write about. You just pick a prompt and jump right in.

I’m starting a new novel project this month. I have a nugget of an idea, a main character with a story to tell, and a somewhat fuzzy cast of characters for her to encounter along the way.

Like my last novel, this idea was sparked by a piece of history that was significant to me as a child. In this case, it’s the story of Grace Darling, a young woman who, in 1838, became a national heroine when she saved the lives of nine shipwrecked people. I’m not trying to simply retell the story, even though it’s a good one. Instead, I’m playing around with bringing the scenario into present day and exploring what happens to a reluctant heroine. What would possess a teenage girl to risk her life to save other people? And how would her life change, for better and for worse?

Right now, I don’t have answers to any of these questions, but this is the really fun part of writing. I could take this nugget and follow it in 20 different directions, each resulting in a completely different book. What propelled her to get into that boat and start rowing? Was it love? Was it a desire for fame? Was she mad at her parents and wanted to make a point? I don’t know yet.

But as I start to dig for answers, my Grace is coming into focus. She’s no longer a lighthouse keeper’s daughter, but maybe she has an aunt who lives a solitary life in a decommissioned lighthouse. She has a brother, too, and a best friend, and she’s starting to tell me her history.

Where her story will go, I have no idea yet. Like Grace, I’m climbing in my writing boat and rowing out into the unknown. I can’t wait to see where I wash ashore.